Seduction by Induction
by coincident
Summary: Because even psychotic S-class killer missing-nin are lovesick teenagers at some point. ItaShi/one-shot.


A/N: Oh my god. I have nothing to say about this.

CAN SOMEONE PLEASE WRITE CRACK ABOUT THIS PAIRING SO I DON'T HAVE TO FULFILL MY OWN DELUDED FANTASIES? thx.

Here is a festering crackfluff cliche-fest of fluffy crack (if you've read "Raikiri," you...probably know what you're in for.)

Enjoy!

* * *

  
The logical conclusion was to stalk Shisui on all his dates.

In the time-honored tradition of stalkers throughout the ages, Itachi assured himself that this was not stalking, merely preliminary reconnaissance in case one of his cousin's erstwhile girlfriends turned out to be some sort of couched spy, or something (the 'or something' featuring more prominently in his thought process than the rest of the statement). This had yet to be proven or, admittedly, to ever happen in the history of Konoha, but Uchiha Itachi was a trained ANBU and understood the necessity of preemptive action.

It was a pity about Shisui's ruined dates, but they _were_ bound by patriotism and binding legal contracts to sacrifice for the greater good of the village.

Shisui would understand. Probably.

**~X~**

It began with Inuzuka Hana.

It ended with eleven ounces of liquid chocolate distilled into the appetizer ordered for her three hulking nin-dogs—nowhere near enough to cause discomfort, but enough to send them into a frenzy of barking and spasming that was enough to wreck the restaurant and, in a pleasant coincidence, the date.

**~X~**

Following shortly after was Uzuki Yuugao.

This was considerably trickier, but through skillful manuevering of underworld contacts (i.e. proactive resource allocation of pornography from Hatake Kakashi to Shiranui Genma) Itachi was able to discern that a certain Gekko Hayate had as much stake in halting this date as he did. From there, it was smooth sailing—a mere henge'd kage bunshin glowering at her from across the room and pretty, elegant Yuugao became a mess, dropping her chopsticks, upending a bowl of soup, and calling Shisui "Hayate" three times out of five.

"I'm sorry, Haya—Shisui-kun!" she finally declared, throwing down her napkin in a paroxysm of sentimentality that left Shisui looking mildly terrified. "I just can't do this, I—I'm in love with Hayate!"

And she promptly ran out of the restaurant, leaving Shisui alone with a roomful of aghast stares and a check as poetically white in the moonlight as the flower of Yuugao's namesake.

**~X~**

Mitarashi Anko was a different story altogether. She was Shisui's teammate, and Itachi was lost on finding a way to eliminate her without causing permanent brain trauma or the need to go missing-nin. As it was, the girl wasn't fazed by _anything_—Itachi supposed having a notorious snake-vomiting sociopath for a teacher did this to a person, but there were limits—and what was worse, she seemed to have a borderline friendly relationship with Shisui already, which was just not acceptable.

(Because of the possibility of Sunagakure saboteurs. Clearly.)

As a preliminary measure, he cast a genjutsu over the chefs that caused them to interpret every dish ordered by table seventeen as something called "Hot Hot Chili Madness Mirch Bonanza," which was coated in chili powder to the extent that the contents were indiscernible, and the dish, passing by on its way to Shisui and Anko, actually caused a lesser diner to faint.

"Looks awesome!" said Anko. "Good choice, loser."

Shisui, for his part, said something predictably moronic like, "I'm pretty sure we just ordered nabe udon, but this looks great, too," which Itachi ignored, preoccupied as he was on observing Anko's imminent exit out of Shisui's proximity and romantic affairs with what he determinedly would not refer to as glee or something very like it. Anko took a bite. Chewed. Swallowed. Around her, several bacteria in the air caught a whiff of the toxic chili residue and instantly died in a flurry of self-sterilization.

Then she grinned, exposing what were not but certainly seemed like they should have been very pointy teeth.

"Good stuff," she quipped. "Cheers, Sui-kun."

It was then that Uchiha Itachi realized he was in very deep trouble indeed.

**~X~**

Uchiha Shisui was two years older than him, had a bad habit of blushing with his ears when he was embarassed about something, and could ruin a mission like nobody's business—usually with self-penned sitcom blithering that possibly seemed witty inside his own head—and Itachi was sort of kind of maybe A LITTLE fixated on him in what could sort of kind of maybe A LITTLE count as an unhealthy fashion. There were many serious problems with this, first and foremost the fact that unhealthy fixations came with all sorts of attendant horrors, such as turning red when Shisui did something like help him strap his breastplate on, or—possibly worse—_blinking _at inopportune moments, so as to convey the mistaken impression that he found Shisui's babbling entertaining.

There were also less serious problems, such as the fact that Shisui was—apparently—male, and—apparently—his cousin, neither of which bothered Itachi to any great degree. He was fairly sure that this was how clans a) stemmed overpopulation and b) ensured the limiting of their bloodlines, both of which Itachi approved of heartily as patriotic duties (because, as already established, he was very concerned with said patriotic duties).

However, problems aside, Itachi was very clear on the final outcome of the situation: he had somehow developed quite the not-crush on Uchiha Shisui, and what Uchiha Itachi wanted, Uchiha Itachi generally…caused to fall into his hands with varying degrees of coincidence, unlikely collusions of fate, and appropriate good fortune.

Sabotage of dates aborted with the arrival of Mitarashi Anko, he decided the time was ripe for the next stage of his romantic master plan, which admittedly did not exist. A stage which involved gratituous use of seduction techniques.

This was a field which, for some reason, had not been adequately covered at the Academy. So Itachi defaulted to his usual source of information on new techniques, feeling benignly appreciative that he had an older brother figure around for consultation on these matters.

**~X~**

He realized belatedly that asking the actual object of his affections was a bad idea, but by that point Shisui had already chased him around the compound four times in a row, screaming, "WHO YOU WANNA HOOK UP WITH, JAILBAIT?" at the top of his lungs.

**~X~**

Hatake Kakashi was leery.

"My, my, Itachi-kun, aren't you a little young for that sort of thing?"

Itachi looked blankly at him, purporting to convey the full extent of the fact that he was Uchiha Itachi and he was never too young for _anything. _

"I am almost fourteen, Kakashi-senpai," he said anyway, just to fan the fire on Kakashi's already flawed pretense at maintaining moral respectability.

"Is this about Shisui-kun?" asked Kakashi all of a sudden, in a terrifying display of either prescience, clairvoyance, or Itachi's inability to be subtle. Itachi simply continued to stare blankly at him.

"All right," said Kakashi, "if it's about _Shisui-kun_—" more leering— "I'm more than pleased to lend my assistance, Itachi-kun. But why come to me?"

Itachi treated the orange book in Kakashi's hand to a glare that singed off part of the cover.

"Oh, Icha-Icha," Kakashi waved. "Yes, the classic approach has its merits. But considering our…unique abilities, we should be able to set you up with something more appropriate to the situation."

They spent something like forty-five minutes sitting in front of a television screen with a handful of rented videos and more than a handful of bottles filled with something Itachi could perceive eating away at his intestines with a feeling that felt the way maniacal laughter sounded. Kakashi spent a good deal of the time giggling. Itachi spent a good deal of the time trying to wrap his activated sharingan around something called "The Flaming Wheelbarrow: Bonus for Katon Users!" which he was fairly sure Shisui would not be interested in, but it never hurt to be prepared. About half an hour into this venture, Itachi came to the conclusion that while these advanced techniques were undoubtedly useful in their place, there was no reasonable way to entice Shisui into that place (for starters, he didn't know where the hell it was), and so he was missing a step in the procedure somewhere.

He thanked Kakashi politely for his time and went in search of higher authority.

**~X~**

"The key is," said Jiraiya, "to lay it on _thick_."

Itachi nodded courteously. "I would appreciate a practical demonstration, Jiraiya-sama."

"But of course, my conscientious child!"

Jiraiya sauntered away after a woman walking down the street and promptly slapped her on the backside. She kicked him in the head. He lay facedown in the street and giggled, and Itachi wondered if the giggling was really all that integral to the procedure before deciding that his dignity did not really need the additional strain and shutting off his sharingan.

"That did not appear to be greatly effective, Jiraiya-sama," he ventured, when the legendary sannin came reeling back to him. "Forgive me if this is a mistaken impression, but she seemed…slightly affronted."

"Ah, but that's the beauty of what I've just told you!" beamed Jiraiya. "She's a _woman_, and hence didn't…appreciate my appreciation…of her assets! But as far as I understand, that young man of yours is very much male, so by simple contrapositives, this should work on him." To Itachi's undying horror, he actually _winked _at him.

Itachi took a moment to drown his soul ritualistically over this latest humiliation before briefly wondering why everyone and their sensei once removed seemed to be enlightened on his fixation with Shisui. He briefly considered the possibility that he was being stupidly obvious about this entire thing. Then he briefly considered the possibility that he was going insane for briefly considering even a brief consideration of such a thing, because Uchiha Itachi, Stealth Tiger of ANBU (he hadn't actually been given this name, but it was surely only a matter of time) was nothing if not discreet. Discreet like a _fiend._

"Thank you for your time, Jiraiya-sama," he said, and bowed. Jiraiya ruffled his hair—and oh, the things one endured for love!—before sending him on his way, worriedly intuiting that something was still missing from his arsenal of seductiveness. The thought of intuition led him cognitively to the standard trope on this subject, so Itachi pointed his metaphorical boots in the direction of the hospital, this time in pursuit of feminine wisdom.

**~X~**

"Itachi-kun!" shrieked Shizune when she saw him, and promptly dropped a tray of syringes on her feet.

"Hello, Shizune," said Itachi tonelessly, after helping her pick up several of the scattered medical devices and work loose the ones that were currently quivering point down in the tile flooring of the hospital hallway. "I had wondered if you could afford a teammate some assistance."

When he had explained his situation, using lots of key shinobi phrases like "national security" and "possibility that Mitarashi Anko is in fact a cloned agent of refugee Kirigakure bloodline clans sent to breed with Shisui to obtain the sharingan," he was quite sure he saw an expression of empathetic comprehension flicker across her face. Although it was easy to confuse this with an expression of amusement and mild horror, he did not make this understandable mistake. Shizune set down her tray and gestured him further into a different ward of the hospital, one he had never seen before.

"I think it's really sweet!" she said. "It's kind of hard to believe that Shisui and Anko…but they've always been great teammates, so who knows? I can kind of see it, now that I think about it."

Strangely, Itachi, who had always gotten along well with his female teammate, felt the sudden urge to gnaw maniacally on her arm.

"But he'd be adorable with you, of course," she said kindly, obviously spotting his expression. "I mean, best friends and all that. So what _I'd _suggest…"

Ten minutes later, Itachi left with his arms full of heart-shaped balloons and what appeared to be a singing cactus, which blared out show tunes at cringe-inducing volume when he tweaked one of its arms in fascinated horror. What this had to do with Shisui was unclear. He took his mind off this pressing issue to turn it to the task of casting invisibility genjutsu over the balloons, which were drawing passerby eyes to him in a decidedly incriminating fashion.

This was getting slightly out of hand. He decided that perhaps someone who knew him better might have been a good bet, and as such, went in such of his clandestine teacher.

**~X~**

Madara's advice was to tie Shisui to a tree and have his way with him.

"You mean the Flaming Wheelbarrow?" asked Itachi, somewhat confused. "I must confess I still do not understand the purpose."

Madara raised an eyebrow. "That one had something of a following in my youth," he admitted. "I was quite the master back then. Come to think of it, I've never told you the story of how the Uchiha came to be associated with fire techniques—"

"I do not understand," said Itachi. "How will this awaken romantic feelings for me within Shisui?"

"It'll awaken _other things_," said Madara with the air of extreme patience he had manifested the time Itachi accidentally trapped himself in his Tsukuyomi for four hours (it was full of, inexplicably, visions of himself skulking around in a nurse's outfit, which was not exactly unpleasant so much as unnervingly bizarre verging on creepy). When Itachi's expression remained blank, Madara sighed and patted the grass next to him.

"Itachi," he began, "when a man and a woman love each other very much…"

**~X~**

The advice of a child, Itachi decided neurotically, was his absolute last resort in this situation, perhaps not even so much to gain a helpful solution to his problem as to counteract the extreme psychological harm Madara had unleashed upon him in response to a perfectly innocent question.

"…and then you pull on her hair and _hit her_," finished Sasuke happily. "Nii-san? Did you hear me?"

Itachi blinked. "Forgive me, Sasuke."

He made a concerted effort to understand what the hell his little brother was talking about, but was forced to confront the unpleasant fact that yes, it actually did make _no sense at all_.

Sasuke, for his part, swung his legs back and forth over their porch and looked as if all were right with the world—which it clearly wasn't, since his older brother was actually asking for input on a situation—but Itachi could see that he was determined to make this into one of those brotherly moments which would feature prominently in his damaged mind if Itachi ever decided to do something insane like betray their village or wear nail polish or something equally mind-bending.

"That's how you tell someone you like her," chirped Sasuke, tugging on Itachi's shirt. "But then you have to run away _really fast_. Or you get cooties."

Technically, there was no medical evidence conclusively proving that cooties was _not _a contractable disease. "But then how do you know what…she…thinks?"

"That's the important part!" screeched Sasuke in a half-whisper-half-shriek. He gestured Itachi closer. "You have to send her a _note_. Okay? So she can circle if she likes you or not. That's the important part."

Itachi exercised his deep analytical brilliance on this latest nugget and concluded that it made about as much sense as the…Flaming Wheelbarrow, which he would never look at the same way again after Madara and his unnecessary interference. He was just about to go and resign himself to making a double-edged, probably vindictive toast at Anko and Shisui's silver jubilee when Sasuke said, "Oh, it's _you," _with that special, toe-curling inflection he reserved especially for Shisui. Itachi's head shot up. And indeed, there was his best friend, coming down the path to their house and practically summoning sunbeams to frolic around him and glint inappropriately on his bare chest, which was bare, seeing as he had presumably been doing something which required it to be bare, in the manner in which a bare chest was as bare as a bare chest, and was that Itachi's brain dribbling onto the gravel with such merry splashing abandon?

"Well, look who's home," said Shisui. "Where've you been all day?"

Itachi was relieved to find that it was not in fact his brain, but the deer-chaser in the corner of the garden.

"I have been…walking. Around Konoha. I must protect it. You are not wearing a shirt." These seemed related in his head.

"I…see," said Shisui. This was already shaping up to be a very bad sort of conversation, the sort that were filled with ellipses and non sequiturs and general idiocy disguised as words clawing their way out of his mouth, which had gone alarmingly lax so as to facilitate the passage of said general idiocy.

"Sasuke," continued Itachi, paddling frantically away down his stream of madness, "why don't you go and not be here?"

Sasuke cast him a surprised look, but bolted as only a younger sibling can bolt when he has need to. Shisui came up the steps, pausing only to dig a crushed shirt out of his satchel and pull it on over the head. "Um…I'm sorry if you were offended by the…lack of shirt," he said. "Just taking a swim. You know, like a normal human being. Is something wrong with you? Are you going through puberty or something? Because I _swear_, if your voice gets any deeper—"

Itachi decided this was a good time to field-test some of his newly-acquired seduction techniques, so he slapped Shisui on the ass.

Shisui whipped around and stared at him.

"You _are _going through puberty," he said in a hushed and slightly awed voice. "Oh my _god_, I didn't think it was possible. You little _freak_. Okay, okay, so before this gets out of hand…Itachi, when a man and a woman love each other very much—"

"_Shisui_," Itachi broke in hurriedly, "these are for you."

He groped around for the singing cactus he had placed somewhere behind him and thrust it at Shisui. Upon reflection, he added some of the heart-shaped balloons.

Shisui looked at the balloons. He looked at Itachi. Then he placed his hands together and said, "_Kai_!"

He said it a few more times, and Itachi added Shizune to his list of failures at the art of seduction. He was desperate at this point. So when Shisui turned around, ostensibly scoping out the area for whatever oddball enemy nin had cast the genjutsu upon their idyllic lives, he had plenty of time to scribble a note and shove it at Shisui's frantically sealing hands.

"What the fuck—" Shisui unrolled the paper and his expression changed, as if someone had simultaneously tickled him, punched him in the gut, poured pink paint on him, and attached every one of his curls to a functioning electric cable. Itachi's heart pattered out a halfhearted little syncopation and sank into the abyss, which, by all accounts, seemed to reside somewhere in the area of his stomach.

The note read, "Do you like me? Circle yes or no."

"You do not have to look at it," he said brusquely, trying to outrun the crushing wave of awkwardness that bore down on him from behind like a creature of the night with intent to feast upon his liquefied grey matter. "I already know of your affair with Mitarashi-san, and—"

"_Affair_? She's my teammate, you stupid nut, we were meeting to divvy up responsibilities now that Yamato's on that training trip, but—wait, that was _you _sabotaging those dates? God, Itachi, you…"

Shisui still seemed frozen in place by the throes of that indefinable expression, but this was proven to be untrue when, a moment later, Itachi's own note was folded up and thrown and hitting him in the forehead. The sloppy circle was hideously deformed, but still centered unmistakably over the word "yes."

Itachi looked at it with absolutely no expression, mainly because he was discreet like a _fiend_, but also because there was no _mission accomplished _stamp to put on Shisui's forehead, which would have nicely satisfied many of his latent fantasies.

Shisui grinned at him.

"Remind me to do a textbook fuckover of whoever gave you all these mental bits of advice," he said. "I mean, absolutely none of them made any sense."

"I was also told to tie you to a tree and have my way with you."

Shisui quirked an eyebrow. He sealed a hand leisurely over Itachi's wrist and drew him in a little closer, a movement that made Itachi's heart lurch out of its occupied space, because his stomach was suddenly needed to perform obscure gymnastic movements.

"_Really_," he said, smiling long and lush and slow. "Well, one out of five isn't bad."

**~X~**

_end_


End file.
